Opium Fingers

Opium Fingers (first appeared in SNM Horror November 2009)

Hunched over parchment with quill in hand, Liam Travian struggled to write a poem. Searching for inspiration, he gazed out at the snow-dusted, skeletal trees with scrawny limbs reaching toward the sky. His frozen lawn was fragile and brittle at the close of a long winter. Not a speck of green could be seen. The blank whiteness strangling his home confirmed his suspicions: the world was dying.

Words tapped at the back of his teeth. They seemed desperate to escape. Liam clamped his mouth shut and tilted his head. He hoped an imprisoned verse would roll down his arm and into his hand, where it belonged. Nothing happened, not even a smudge appeared on the paper before him. The ink on the tip of his quill dried. He dipped the vane into the inkwell and stirred. Maybe something flavorful is stuck to the bottom. He scraped the plume against the glass base and removed the saturated tip. He adored the way a black, glossy droplet of ink, thick as blood, clung to the tip. He shook his hand and smiled as the droplet of ink leapt from the quill and plopped onto the paper. It splattered—suicidal. Alarmed by a wretched noise that rang through his house, he spun in his chair and glared at the door.

His niece, Elise, was at it again. Liam raked his writing utensils from the desk with one angry sweep of his arm. Ink stained the curtains and pooled on the cushion of his favorite upholstered chair.

In the parlor, Elise practiced the piano. Repeated phrases by clumsy hands, forgetful and careless, maneuvered over keys and bumped into a dissonant bass with little regard for melodic dictation. Her incessant, insufferable hammering of pedals and tones misaligned with a constant ticking of a metronome invaded Liam’s study. The irritant music pricked his ears with its failed attempts at accuracy. Elise’s fingers struck wrong notes as often as they found their rightful placement.

A polite child compared to his nephew, Hamish, Elise sat day after day, fastidiously transfixed on the piano bench and rehearsed masterpieces never intended for developing hands while Liam locked himself away in his study. He loathed the presence of his family, even when the house was quiet. This hideous racket abusing his senses on a daily basis infuriated him. When Elise fumbled a simple major scale, Liam was ripped from his writing. He analyzed every misread accidental or delayed articulation.

He was convinced that Elise’s fingers were worms, maggots eating the decomposed compositions of Beethoven. Liam envied Beethoven’s corpse and deaf spirit, unaware of how Elise massacred his genius.

Ah. A brief moment of silence. She paused to turn the page like an executioner with sharpened axe at the ready for beheading a criminal. The torture resumed.

Three weeks, hostage in his own home, as his sister, Annabelle, and her two grotesque offspring pranced about the house, rearranging furniture, washing windows, and filling the air with aromas of stew and bread. They had come to repair household damage done by the long winter and nurse Liam’s disintegrating health, which had deteriorated from pneumonia and fevers over the months.

He lacked the strength to send them away. A sequestered desire to banish his niece, nephew and sister into the cold forest pressed heavily on his psyche. He analyzed his emotional distaste for his family and tried to find an admirable reason such thoughts devoured his brain, but sinister validation was all he unveiled. Guilt wrenched his insides.

What kind of man am I to dream of harm befalling on my own flesh and blood?

 Liam covered his ears and dove nose first into the blank page before him. Mucous and drool created their own disgusting art. He waited for a musical intermission.
Finally! I hope she is finished for the day.

During the slight musical reprieve, Liam withdrew from his study. On tiptoes, he crept down the hall to his bedroom and ducked inside before he was spotted by his guests. An opium pipe waited for him. He could feel it beckoning from its hiding place. It was wrapped in a velvet remnant and nestled in the bottom drawer of his dresser beneath his nightshirts. Liam retrieved the pipe and cradled it in his palm. He fished around in a wooden box on the bookcase, collected his matches and his drug-pouch then opened his bedroom window, and braced against the icy air. He filled his pipe then lit it. With the sweet smoke drawn into his lungs, he no longer cared that his work had been interrupted by Elise’s practice, nor did he notice his skin stiffening as it became colder.

He heard a tap on his door. “Uncle, time for dinner.” Elise’s frail, soft voice trickled through the keyhole. “Venison stew. Please come eat with us. Mama is worried because you haven’t been eating enough. Please join us this evening.”
Liam stood still and silent until he heard Elise’s footsteps dissipate down the hall.
He closed the window and hid his pipe away then slipped on a dark green dinner jacket. He looked at himself in the mirror and buttoned the silver buttons of his coat from waist to Adam’s apple, leaving only the slightest hint of ruffled shirt cuff and collar. He wore the same black knee-pants, white socks, and black shoes he had worn since the arrival of his visitors. With long, slender fingers he combed through his greasy brown hair and slicked it back into a low ponytail at the nape of his neck. His face needed shaving, but he didn’t have the time nor desire to address his stubble. He shuffled to the dining room. The fragrances of baked bread and seasoned meat should have made his stomach growl, but his appetite had vanished with his poetic muse. He took a seat at the head of the table and avoided eye contact with Annabelle.

Elise peered at him over her bowl. Her large, inquisitive blue eyes studied his countenance. Liam cleared his throat and grimaced. A sudden daydream annihilated his tranquility…

He and Elise sat damp and smiling after making love on the floor of the wine cellar. She opened her pretty pout and feasted on wedges of cheese he fed her with care. They sipped a delicious, sweet Riesling straight from the bottle. Blue eyes sparkling with adoration, she tilted her face toward him and invited a kiss.

Out of my head you beguiling whore! You are a child!

“Liam, you’ve decided to join us,” Annabelle cooed with a warm, cheerful sincerity dripping from each uttered syllable.

Liam coughed up phlegm into his napkin and stared down at his plate.
The family dined in pretense, dancing around the obvious disgust his fragility impressed upon the female virtue of Annabelle. Alas, his nephew, Hamish, wasn’t interested in Liam a bit. Hamish scarcely glanced Liam’s direction.

Elise stared continuously. She was twelve years of age, not yet a woman, but her feline curl of lip and blush of cheek grew more lethal with each passing evening.
Hamish was quite the simpleton who mindlessly blathered on about his hunting excursions and bragged about his kills. Annabelle, with hands folded atop an embroidered napkin, smiled. The dreary upturned gesture leered across the table, night after torturous night, goading Liam. This is what I’m to be grateful for? These lumps in fine clothes seated around my dining table, uninvited? I hasten to think what opinions these urchins have formed of me.

After forcing a few spoonfuls of food down his esophagus, Liam excused himself and retired to his study where he read his favorite Shakespearian sonnets aloud and envisioned someone admiring his work as he revered the works of the world's finest poets filling anthologies piled high on his side table. He spat out the lines of the masters with a songlike baritone voice displaying inflection and enunciation an actor would envy.

In the deepest crease of night, he unfolded his work at a lamp-lit desk. Oil fumes blistered his watering eyes -- straining to see. Alas, soaked quill in hand, he began to write.

The ghostly vigil of Elise crawled out of the knot holes in the pine floor and seized his thoughts. He shuddered, unable to scribe a singular sentence worthy of review. The affection of his family, a curse bestowed upon him, a plague of compassion, would surely be his demise.

That night, Elise, on the brink of womanhood, came to him in dreams once more. Her eyes looked through him, beyond his face, into the corner where he huddled with hands folded over ears as he rocked out of time. She knew her music had taunted him. He could tell by the way swayed her girlish frame with glee. Pale moonlight bled through her gauze gown, magnified her curves, and teased the silhouette of her blooming body. She sat on the edge of his desk and slowly lifted her hemline. Her supple thighs were exposed. He reached out his hungry fingers and awoke clawing the air.

Liam ignored Elise when she swept past him in the hall during daylight hours. He resisted her melodious voice that called his name when he was fully awake, but when he dreamt, he wore no armor suitable for fending off such treacherous wiles. She haunted him at his weakest and his hatred for her grew. It swelled like a boil engorged with infection.

He lowered his head onto his pillow. Elise wiggled into his slumbering mind. He unfastened her corset and let her dress puddle onto the floor. Nude, she sat at the piano and performed the song Liam despised during wakefulness. He crawled beneath the belly of the baby grand and admired Elise’s tender feet, narrow ankles, and gorgeous, bare legs. He strained to see more, but awoke in sweat.

Witch! Why must you tease me each time my eyes close?

The following morning, Liam crossed paths with Hamish in the kitchen. Hamish, who was grinding meat at the table, observed little more than the heads, antlers and claws he had collected. Annabelle entered the room and Hamish ceased his task, grabbed a set of antlers and paraded them before Annabelle. She applauded with a morbid infatuation of death visible in her eyes. She and Liam were alike in this manner. He could see a glint of family resemblance when she gloated about Hamish’s killing skills. Liam did not reprimand or even hint such a tango with death would thicken Hamish’s rind and make him less desirable by those who viewed brutality as a sign of ignorance. Hamish was becoming who he was intended to be and that was more than anyone could say for Elise.

Elise glided into the room shortly after the antler charade. She had forced herself into a white corseted gown that dusted the floor with lace petticoats. Liam noted how she was never tethered to an apron or sprinkled with flour. Annabelle was molding Elise to be a lady; a jewel to catch the eye of a gentleman, but Elise was not suitable material for a lady. Her bosom overflowed with each gasped breath. She inhaled deeply in Liam’s presence to test her talons, sharpening them by demurely looking away whenever he chased her glances with a raised eyebrow and male libido reaction.

Coy games of a lady? I think not.

Safe in his bedroom, fevers melted Liam’s thoughts into hot wax. Day and night fused together in a molten moment. Delirium was not unfamiliar to him. He recognized the piercing headaches that preceded nightmares as fantasy murdered reality. The two were one and he was captive and slave. The faint smell of gardenia wafted through the air and he sensed Elise, staring through the keyhole into his bed chamber. He knew that she watched his transformation from man to infant. An unmerciful senility wrung his spine until he could no longer stand against the powerful urges pain, fear and desire had injected.

Distant notes clawed through his mattress and thumped his eardrum then beat him with their fists. Elise’s music churned his heart with amateur interpretation. There was nothing he could do, but allow it to enter him. It poisoned his palette with mediocrity. He resigned himself to the fate of a displeased audience, victim of an auditory crime.

Elise's petite hands flew past like bird’s wings, flitting shadows before the moon, bats, or scrawny feathered sparrows. They multiplied and flew into walls, hundreds, thousands, singing songs out of tune. He saw them, white digits curled -- pouncing on ivory and ebony, tap-dancing across an uneven stage that gave way beneath their weight.

This vixen-child will not unhinge my sanity!

His ghostly dream-feet walked down the hall toward the parlor. He carried a rope. Elise’s fingers hopped and skipped across the keys. Liam snuck up behind her and bound her arms behind her back. She looked into his eyes and didn’t scream. He plucked her fingers from her hands like petals from daisies. She smiled and nuzzled his palm as he caressed her face. He placed her amputated index in his mouth and lit the bloody knuckle as he suckled the tip as if a Cuban cigar.

He awoke smoking his opium pipe by the window. The sound of crickets serenaded him in the moonlight. He stared at the letter opener on the desk and contemplated piercing his eardrums, but the music of the night was a pleasure he did not wish to deny himself. He continued to smoke and fantasize…

Liam visited Elise’s bed chamber. He found her door unlocked. He entered the candlelit room. She was sprawled across the bed. Her small hands hid the fur between her thighs. He kissed her. She opened her mouth to speak. The sound of the haunting piano replaced her voice. He stormed off to the parlor and locked the piano lid. He returned to Elise’s room. She had gotten dressed and sat at her vanity—combing her long blond hair. He whispered, “Disrobe again, sweetness.”
Elise turned to face him. Her blue eyes twitched in their sockets and her mouth was stitched shut with needle and thread. An empty spool and pincushion rested on the edge of her dressing table.

“Child, what have you done

She lifted her hands and fanned her fingers in the air. The piano began to play. He snipped her fingers off with a pair of scissors and unstitched her mouth. “Better, love?”

Elise did not answer. Her eyes ceased their erratic movement and she held his gaze.

The opium pipe shattered on the floor and startled Liam from his fantasy. Sunlight streamed in his window. Elise practiced the piano. He climbed through his window, sat in the snow, and leaned against the stone foundation of his house. He could feel the vibrations resonating from the sound board of the baby grand. Breath-fog clouded his view of the forest on the horizon. Hamish walked from the woods dragging a deer carcass behind him. He spotted Liam and abandoned his kill as he ran toward him.

“Uncle, have you lost your mind? Go inside.” Hamish escorted Liam inside to a chair in the parlor by the fire. Liam scowled at Elise who was perched on the piano bench with evil hands resting on the ebony and ivory keys. She looked away then left the room. Liam continued to glare at the piano.

Elise returned with a blanket. She wrapped it around Liam’s shoulders and whispered, “There. This will warm you up. Would you like a cup of hot tea?” She placed her palms on his cheeks. “You’re freezing.” He closed his eyes and absorbed the sensation of her touch.

Annabelle marched into the room and urged him to go to bed. He staggered down the hall toward his bed chamber. He heard whispering behind him, but he didn’t care to know what was being said. Sitting on the edge of the bed, he grabbed the letter opener and slid it beneath his pillow.

This music will not get the best of me. I’ll render myself deaf before I let that happen.

Liam climbed into bed and pulled the covers to his chin. He hummed Elise’s song and drifted to sleep. Elise was waiting for him in their dream chamber. A rope and knife were on the bed. She stood naked before a full length mirror. Liam admired her front and back simultaneously. He was overwhelmed. He fell to his knees. She walked toward him and grabbed his hand. Elise gently guided him to the bed. She stood at his side and put her arms behind her back. She nodded toward the rope and gave him a seductive grin over her left shoulder. He wrapped the rope around her wrists and kissed her lower back.

The piano interrupted their escapade.

With knife in hand, he stomped to the parlor and stabbed the beast in the heart. Liquid music oozed from the wound, but no sound could be heard.

He returned to Elise. She was on the edge of the bed with arms bound. He lit his opium pipe and held the tip in her mouth. She inhaled and closed her eyes. He stepped back and admired her supple curves as smoke snaked from her nostrils. With an evil grin, she tickled the air with her fingers.

Piano music ripped through his skull, whether imagined or real. The tangled rhythms and pitches became distorted, unending, looping in demonic circles like vultures overhead. He could not bear to hear it any longer.

He sliced her fingers off with the knife.

The sight of blood soaked sheets and tears in Elise’s eyes jarred him from the dream. He retrieved the letter opener and pierced his eardrums to punish himself for such impure thoughts. He passed out.

Liam awoke to silence and blood on his pillow. Hamish entered his room and stood over him with a bloody knife and stammered words that Liam could not comprehend. Annabelle moved to his side. Blood soaked her dinner dress. She was crying as she reached for a cigar box on his bedside table. She opened it and revealed ten dainty fingers lined neatly in rows. Liam looked into Annabelle's face. Her mouth was agape and her hands trembled. He strained to hear her soundless scream… and his own.

Interview with A.J. Brown

I posted an inteview on Back Space Junkie I'd like to share with everyone, especially horror writers. AJ Brown is one of the kindest and most dedicated writers I have met. He tends to write horror stories, but not exclusively. I hope you will check out his interview Interview with AJ Brown

Pod Cast

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Horror News

I'm new to the world of horror, but I'm having a grand time learning the blood-drenched ropes. I've been frequenting a writer site where the majority of the writers are big fans and contributors in the horror genre. I plan to interview some of these authors and hold open discussions about the future of horror, as it seems to be evolving and reaching its skeletal fingers into other genres while zines, specifically horror, are dying.

My first horror writer interview will be posted on Backspace Junkie soon and I'll pop over here and direct you that way, when its live.

As for now, I'm off to take pictures of an old cemetery in town for story inspiration - bwahaha.

I'll stop by again tomorrow and tell you all about it, maybe even post a few pics, if they come out well.

A. Bookbinder Music Box Video

This video/song was inspired by a story John Arthur Miller is in the process of writing. There is a ghost story about a man, A. Bookbinder, who was a patient at an asylum. When he died, they buried him beneath an elm tree. As they were burying him, many of the people gathered around swore they saw Bookbinder standing by the tree. This vision struck so many people they opened the coffin to verify he was still there. They heard crying from within, but when they opened the lid - all was silent and there he was, even though the casket did seem unusually light. The elm tree died after Bookbinder's burial. The ghost story lives on. John Arthur Miller is using this ghost story as a prompt for one of his many projects in the works.

Miller recently requested help for crafting a children's song for his story. He had penned a nice poem and wanted to use it as a song children/story characters woke up singing. I took his poem and played with it a bit, then sang a simple melody (since I taught elementary music for several years - this came rather naturally) I then downloaded Movie Maker for free and Audacity for free and used those programs to create a tiny video. All of this was done within a few hours of reading his story idea and poem. This song is short and melodically simple, but I think it serves its purpose well. I've posted it here, primarily so John Arthur Miller could view it and hear it.

My father and husband seem to like it and John is pleased with it, so, I've decided to leave it up. My first music video, ever. It was fun. Now I want to do more...elaborate and intricate things...use instruments and such. My wheels are truly spinning out of control. John, you've created a monster!